on remembering

it seems fitting, that after i saw people try to peer into future singularities, i am reflecting on one past. i shared this a while ago on myspace, but the years passed and it's relevant again with a little tweaking. please feel free to link your responses to the day in the comments... i apologize to any people i may offend, but if we do not take the time to examine our country, she will never be the one we dream of.

i think we have forgotten how to eulogize our nation's ages. i make this comment today, because nations do age and pass through phases of their lives just as people do. and if, as people do, we clutch our injuries close to our hearts and contort our faces with pain at each thought of them, we will never recover. we will never pass from the age of receiving them into the age of remembering, because we tear them open over and over, either in an attempt to reclaim the feeling that immediately preceded the moment of hurting, or perhaps to hold on to the sudden intake of breath and endorphins. the rush that comes and cries, you are still alive.

we are not remembering gratefully. not gracefully, with an eye for the things we had been taking for granted, suddenly thankful again for the feeling of rain on bare skin and the smart of paper slicing through the webbing of your fingers. entranced by the reminder of rubies gently pulsing under our skin, mindful of our fragility and the delicate steel lattices that bear us skyward to push papers and pixels, exchanging the thread of our lives for rent and resources.

we are not remembering the things we've been taught to value. the things we were told "they" hate us for. the things "they" aimed to destroy when "they" stole planes out of the sky and aimed them at innocent people, stranded in cloud cities, beyond the reach of earthbound rescuers. what was it they were punished for? what lines did they transgress, as elevators fed their bodies toward the upper floors?

what did they think of, when some chose to step off into space rather than falling with the glass and rubble and nickel plated pencil holders? falling like stars or like rain?

each moment you are alive, you choose. you choose whether you call in sick, what shampoo you use, what suit you'll wear to the office. you never know which ones matter, until it is much much too late to take it back. personally, the freedom can be unbearable sometimes, when i know to agonize over something... but it is my agony and i cherish it beyond any other pain. i feel so fortunate to be part of such a time as ours that i wallow in indecisiveness. i can't even choose what i'll have for lunch without due gravity and consideration.

that is why it irks me to see people wasting their
podiums on paeans to security rather than liberty. on spreading fear rather than gratitude or insight. with so much ecstasy and brilliance beckoning from every corner of the earth, i am disappointed to still see insurance salesmen enjoying such success. to see so few questioning their expensive and unrealistic plans. and i am taken suddenly, with an image of europe laughing at us, struggling under the weight of a wounded empire, led by our naked emperor... accompanied by the sounds of war we started. but they are the sounds wafting from our speakers as we watch it fought on foreign soil, by strangers and children, as celebrities drunk off our attention pose in flak jackets and relish the nearness, though not the reality of danger.

we owe it to the world to have that debate... before we cry havoc. not after or during, because the dogs we've let slip have not treated the field with due seriousness. we fight this battle, but we've lost sight of the victories we already secured when we imagine that any amount of security is worth our freedoms. do you remember what it was like to fly, when you didn't have to take your shoes off or surrender your water?

some of us are still of an age where we think you must be able to prove yourself to all challengers. others of us have grown older and wiser, we remember our injuries, but we do not continually pick at them to prevent healing. because we realize that scars eventually heal, and the people impressed by past violence might not be the ones we should worry about impressing. we do the dead a disservice in forgetting that they did not choose to lose their lives to history; all our books are filled with the remains of choices, that we might face ours with the weight of all the attendant souls who had theirs taken from them. that we might remember what our dreams are worth, even in daytime as well as darkness.

i do not mean to say we should forget 9-11 or the victims... i only mean we should not keep remembering them as our burden with which we go to war. as i said, we do our dead a disservice when we sacrifice our children to them, out of a passive sense of history and destinies already written.

i believe we make our own destiny. and that when history appears to face us as a dark road into the future that we must persevere through, that we ought always look around to see if we may choose a brighter one. because that is the nature of freedom, and a philosophy more befitting a nation who claims to prize it. if you believe that, please visit stopthespying.org. (thanks boingboing!)